Esteem Enlivened by Desire

...There are times when his view consciousness-one that could mostly to a reviewer to point out that his of history takes on a Whiggish tinge, as have a major, transforming imown work takes issue not merely with pre- when he congratulates Boccaccio for pact on our modernity...

...His new book contests terous love between men and women...

...thought have tuned to other themes, in- ic music and a solemn voice-over...

...it has been a continuing schol- modest: that a countertradition, already household] been a place much desired by arly preoccupation to discover just when present in Homer's account of the home- both men and women...

...Reading her book is like one of roller coastering from high to low, hinged adorned, put securely in its place among those "True Life Adventures" in which the on the pendulum a single being...

...Although he is clearly sympa- Renaissance, to act as a "dragging, tra- costs additional thetic to feminism, he does not subscribe ditional chain on...

...Hagstrum emerging ideal of roman- Jean H. Hagstrum thinks this "vision of marital love," in a tic love in early modern art University of Chicago Press, $36, 495 pp...

...No wonder infatuation Sex with us is a science, while art and wolves to the accompaniment of dramat- is such a problem...

...He rejects the notion that literary and Christianity ied spirituality-which tempered the fear works never refer to anything beyond Reclaiming the Revolution of sexuality that was also present (even themselves and that it is pointless, there- by DANIEL C: MAGUIRE...

...vailing interpretations of the history of writing stories that are "modern in feellove but, at a deeper level, with the whole ing," deplores the way in which me- Just published 513.95 paper trend of recent scholarship in the hu- dieval conventions continued, during the fostitge mid }auulling manities...

...In Helen Fisher's world, all sorts their armpits as love tokens...

...culture that has long been supposed to be and literature, Hagstrum has surpassed without it, owed a good deal to the inhimself in this monumental work, which Christopher Lasch fluence of women, which made itself ranges over more than ten centuries felt, even in works written by men, in the (amply fulfilling the promise of its sub- insight that Eros could be a "force for cititle) in search of a usable past-an hardly exalted alternative to sexual vility" as well as disruption...

...Imagination was often at odds with this widely accepted interpretation, Hagstrum's thesis is not impaired by the practice, to be sure, but we should not which Hagstrum attributes to the belat- recognition that married love had very lit- therefore conclude that married love was ed discovery that "love and marriage do tle place in the dominant tradition of to be found only in works of art...

...kindly deer are attacked by the nasty ic of sensations...

...From the be"available heritage concerning the lov- promiscuity, morally much inferior to vir- ginning, it would seem, the West was able ing couple...

...El amounts also to a defense of romantic love, written with a heartbreaking awareness that lifelong marriage no longer serves as the standard to which erotic prac- MAKING HUMANS MOUSY tice ought to aspire...

...We disHagstrum's literary history of roman- vulsion against romantic love lies beyond like a mystery...

...Fisher The interesting question is why anyone cluding the inevitable misunderstand- offers us the music and text...

...Shared hobbies and tastes, a mu- ANATOMY OF LOVE replay of animal ancestry...

...Ever since this disconcerting His claim, though it is supported by an argues, would have meant nothing to its fact "dawned on us disillusioned mod- imposing structure of erudition, is more audience "had not the oikos [the Greek erns...

...Elsewhere he speaks of the "notack" on the institution of arranged mar- "decorated" forms-has returned to us in tion that suddenly and mysteriously riage...

...BOOKS The mysteries of attraction The author of a number of ESTEEM ENLIVENED BY DESIRE riage as the union of desire and esteem, admirable books, not a few The Couple from Homer to and held up sexual equality as the preof which deal with the Shakespeare condition of erotic friendship...

...The writing least with safe sex) but not with Eros, the of animals display all sorts of wonderful is happily jaunty and disjointed: "In"decoration of sexual impulse by art and personal traits from longing to loyalty to fatuation...

...It is precisely the belief that of [upholding] a satisfying ethical norm...

...A man of irenic temper, cedure carries the danger of reading the claims Daniel M agu ire...

...is a panoply of intense emotions, thought...

...Love at first sight, we are told again and again, provides a shaky basis for marriage...

...It is a vision which was not only to displace or subli- nation," the exercise of which demands that we need today more than mate sexual desire but also to give it a that "we respond correctly and histori- anything:'--FALTER WINK, author of certain legitimacy...

...that might otherwise have aligned gle word everything that distinguishes him `Daniel Maguire not only uncovers Christianity with those religions that as- from current fashion...

...In ancient Greece, it stead of on the sexual subordination that er studies, that romantic love came to was associated with love between men was taken as the norm elsewhere in the be associated with marriage only in the and boys...

...To expect fi- f you like Walt Disney movies, pages of notes, bibliography, and index that delity, permanence, undying attachment you will love Helen Fisher's give Fisher's effort the gloss of scientifis to court disappointment...

...Friendship advice, and candelabra pontificate on eti- some men carry handkerchiefs under easily coexists with sex (these days, at quette...

...This pro- suffer from advanced decadence, current grain...

...Not only marriage but romantic love itself has fallen out of favor...

...The hint of an explanation, emotional horizon...

...modern world...

...22: 26 February 1993 Commonweal much more important in people's actual Hagstrum's work likewise stands firmly lives than we would have inferred sim- opposed to the cynicism (which runs ply from our knowledge of the law...

...Lovers should not demand Dennis O'Brien vantage for Disney is that Mickey Mouse too much of each other...

...Norton & Co., $22.95, 431 pp...

...Esteem had to be divorced ing their ideas from Paris, he is undisfrom an all-male contest, and sexuality mayed by the gap between ideals and from the stigma of sin or excess...

...An insismonolithic category of "patriarchy...

...Far more worldly than those who strum...

...He sees the past as the common basis of these two pire to Nirvana, the extinction of desire...

...or comto the kind of feminism that sees noth- plains that The Tempest (almost alone ing in history except the eternal oppres- among Shakespeare's plays in upholding sion of women and swallows up all a very orthodox, unimaginative view of distinctions, all cultural variations, in the marriage) "does not put Shakespeare on one all-encompassing, undifferentiated, the frontier of the emergent...

...mosexual or heterosexual, seems more re- World, bad foxes lead innocent Like a good cartoon, Fisher's book is liable to us than love, just because it is youth astray, crickets give moral fun and full of surprises...

...They must allow is clearly a cartoon-and the end credits for the possibility that one of them will are considerably shorter than the 118 probably outgrow the other...

...tently moralizing criticism, as is well Commonweal 26 February 1993: 23 known, can interfere with our willingness of everything in the world except sharp, however, lies in his very formulation of to take imaginative works on their own small, immediate, and more or less in- the romantic ideal...

...through so much of the revisionist scholThe "erotic ideal"-the union of esteem arship on the Renaissance, for example) and sexual desire-deserves to be con- that seeks to reduce every expression of sidered "one of the great achievements idealism to the self-interested pursuit of of Western culture," according to Hag- power...

...The assertion preferable to a style of criticism that re- solution than romance to the intractable that this process operates "mysteriously," flects ethical judgment as completely be- problem of male-female union...

...We crave what we can contic love, because it seeks ethical guidance the scope of Hagstrum's enterprise, al- trol-even if the price we pay for control from the past and not just a better un- ready ambitious enough without this is drastic shrinkage of our imaginative and derstanding of our ancestors' foibles, added burden...

...That wives could romantic love came into Western cul- coming that concludes the Odyssey, en- resort to a sexual strike as a form of poture...

...Thus Hagstrum misses the satiric terchangeable pleasures...

...To some extent he has also ginity...

...Admirers of Boccaccio's artistry full force...

...sexual impulse in works of art, he obintent behind Boccaccio's depiction of the Even the "joy of sex" is now shadowed serves, makes us "understand that the pasconventional marriage between ill-as- by AIDS...

...In the Balkans less demanding and intense...

...progress...

...Sexual passion had its champions, to imagine that marriage might rest on reversed himself, since he now seeks to of course, but it was thought unsuitable sexual attraction and mutual respect, incorrect the impression left by his earli- for man and wife...

...One hears talk, more wistful than tablishes "unshakable bonds" that the even if the norm in question is too much ironic, about the wisdom of arranged modern mind (or is it the postmodern defined by the "emergent," is vastly marriages-all in all, it is said, a better mind...

...In the JLL Christian world, an equally strong tradi- t k t tion viewed marriage as an acceptable but "Mommy married Daddy because he was the only person she'd ever met...

...To explain the twentieth-century re- the case against romantic love...

...Fisher making humans mousy, it all comes the same are more likely to endure when to the same delightful mishmash...

...finds so shocking...

...like Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Hagstrum carriage...

...A play not always go together like a horse and Western patriarchy...

...The adpassion cools...

...proposal for the renewal of doctrine, always stood in the way of When he refers to art and literature as American public life from a Platonizing and gnosticizing influences our "heritage," Hagstrum reduces to a sin- widely acclaimed etbicist...

...brings long satisare likely to be put off by Hagstrum's ob- ruptive could lead to lasting relation- factions to the couple and also to most servation that the Decameron, notwith- ships-that Eros could be a stabilizing, of those who witness its formation and standing its "modern" feeling, "falls short let alone a civilizing influence-strikes wish it well...

...Hagstrum does not deny that many authors, both classical and Christian, took a disparaging view of marriage, emphasizing the wife's subordination, the dangerous power of female sexuality, and the incompatibility of sexual passion with the mundane ends marriage was meant to serve...

...The sense of sexuality as a dan- sion aroused early and mysteriously sorted couples and makes him out to be gerous, dark, and unpredictable presence carries over into a calm and fruitful mara reformer instead, the author of an "at- in human life-all the more so in its ried life...

...The idea that anything so dis- induced erotic love...

...Professor of Ethics, Marquette L'nir;ersity dominant) in Christianity...

...would take Fisher's account seriously, ings between men and women, their The basic argument of the book is that yet we are assured by the book jacket that essential incompatibility, the instability whatever you might find in human love she received the American Anthropological of all attachments, and the unreliability behavior, from dalliance to divorce, is a Association's Distinguished Service 24: 26 February 1993 Commonweal...

...He believes in the "ethical imagi- religiously inclined...

...us as a consummate piece of mystifica- a "sudden, overwhelming attraction" esYet this ethical interrogation of a text, tion...

...The prevailing consensus-that it couraged a "softening of male power in litical protest implied, in the words came relatively late (in the cruder ver- patriarchy," hedged in that power with Hagstrum borrows from Sir Kenneth sion of this thesis, only with the "rise of "civilizing limitations," idealized mar- Dover, that "the marital relationship was the middle class")-issues decidedly bedraggled, if not altogether demolished, from this determined assault...

...Friendship, ho- Anatomy of Love...

...Whether it is tual commitment to compromise, and a Helen E. Fisher Disney making mice human, or Helen willingness to admit that things never stay W.W...

...far from reassuring us, seems to clinch side the point...

...As for the second, it re- the current assumption that art has no conThe Moral ceived support from the tradition of nection with reality at all or, alternately, Christian naturalism, as Hagstrum calls that reality represents nothing more than Core of Judaism it-the refusal to condemn matter as evil the "social construction" of artists and critor to equate salvation with a disembod- ics...

...The central im- fore, to expect moral instruction from a A bold and provocative portance of the Incarnation, in Christian work of art...

...In Uncle Walt's ic earnestness...

...But that union did not come eas- aspire to cosmopolitan status by importily," he adds...

...Xenophon spoke for a longstanding tradition in the ancient world when he defined the purpose of marriage as le- 41.~ gitimate offspring and the maintenance of the household economy...

...a source of moral wisdom, not just as a religions but also a vision that can In Christianity as well as Judaism, the love record of follies presumably outgrown in fire and inspire the whole of conof God was often evoked with an abun- our more enlightened (if disillusioned) temporary society, even people not dance of sexual imagery, the effect of age...

...in the Middle Ages, with adul- world...

...a mosathe "facts of life...

...Yet housed Hag strum prefers to emphasize his obli- past too much in the light of present con- deep within these classic religations to other scholars rather than his cerns, and Hagstrum does not always gions is "a lost revolution of objections to their work...

...We like our sexual impulse un- love...

...The reality, often taken to signify the irrelefirst of these developments could have vance of ideals, because he recognizes occurred only in a culture willing to their power to criticize and even alter recountenance the possibility that women ality...

...His book deals with "our literary (and more particularly wives) were good and artistic heritage," not with "historifor something besides reproduction and cal reality as such," but he does not make household labor...

...The elaboration of the terms...

...cally when we weigh alternatives, sus- Engaging the Powers Hagstrum's open and unapologetic ad- pend easy belief, and project the dynamics miration for Western achievements, it of a work of art into a future that reach- "Both Judaism and Christianity hardly needs to be said, goes against the es out to our own situation...

...so it is left avoid it...